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Picnic guIde to Speed (PIS)

DISCLAIMER:
this is both a vehicle and a guide, custom created for Youtuber and Streamer Picnic King (sub to him if you haven't!) to teach him a bit about making fast ground vehicles in KSP.

this description is split in two pieces, a guide on how to use the car, and a guide on the actual learning and science part behind it.

HOW TO USE:
1. take the vehicle to one of the poles (I suggest using vesselmover for this)
2. turn on the brakes and SAS
3. turn on the engine on 0% throttle
4. hit z, pump that throttle to 100 in an instant
5. release brakes
6. DO NOT TRY TO TURN OR USE THE WHEELS
7. speed
8. DO NOT TRY TO TURN OR USE THE WHEELS
9. once you have achieved the speed you wanted, or the vehicle no longer accelerates anymore (as of the time of writing this, I hit over 600 m/s before I stopped), hit x to drop the throttle to 0 and turn on the brakes
10. DO NOT TRY TO TURN OR USE THE WHEELS
11. once the parachute's symbol in the staging is white, use the chute
12. wait for the car to come to a (near) full stop
13. DO NOT TRY TO TURN OR USE THE WHEELS
14. once slowed down, try to turn or use the wheels to only find out I actually locked both to prevent any accidental woopsies from happening anyways :)



THE LEARNING PART:
-to know in advance: in KSP, going over 30 m/s in a land vehicle is more akin to going at hypersonic velocities in real life, any instability will cause you to disintigrate and nothing wants to be stable because ♥♥♥♥ you >:(

-the majority of the fuel tanks aren't actually fuel tanks but instead structural fuselages
-for the cockpit I simply used a 1.25m service bay with a seat for a kerbal in it.
-I hid a small probe core in the vehicle to ensure SAS can be used
the entire body is a single, narrow 1.25m tube
-for the nosecone I used a 1.25m fairing which I turned into a very long and sharp nose, this is a great nose cone for fast vehicles as they are very sleek and also give you some space in it where you can stuff any small equipment you might need
-for wheels I simply used the TR-2 wheels, these are small and lack suspension (suspension is bad in this case), I put these wheels close together (the one in the front isn't one wheel but actually two clipped against eachother to make one sightly wider one, symmetry is important)
-for spoilers/downforce, just grab two pairs of small rigid wingpieces and slap one pair in the front and one at the rear and make them point downwards slightly (at high speeds this is enough for a lot of downforce)
-the fuel tank that sits right before the engine is a engine pre-cooler, jet engines attached to a pre-cooler will have slightly better stats alongside with the small amount of fuel and the air intake the cooler provides
-if you aren't going at ludicrous speeds I suggest using a whiplash jet engine (like I have done here) or a R.A.P.I.E.R, if you want to go beyond this you should instead use a Vector rocket engine with gimbal disabled, don't forget that you are now using a rocket engine so air intakes and pre-coolers are useless and you will need oxidiser in those tanks
-I put a few reaction wheels in the vehicle (and in this case locked them to SAS only), these will help the SAS keep the vehicle stable (hopefully)
-parachutes at the rear
-disable the brakes on the wheels, they are useless and might just killyou
-place a airbrake (or a custom airbrake like I have done here) on a stick behind the engine, I suggest making this stick out of adjustable ramp intakes as they have the least impact on aerodynamics and have an acceptable weight (in this case I used two along with a little bit of part moving), these airbrakes are the only thing that can slow you down at high speeds
-I moved the wheels inside the body a little bit, you want your profile to be as low as possible

these are the most standard practices I used (and all of which I used in this vehicle), there is more to this but this is what's going to keep you alive on your first run

if you don't know if your spoilers work well, turn on the center of lift display, you want it to be pointing down and slightly behind the vehicle.

low mass is always nice but prioritise minimising drag, drag is the real enemy here



POST SCRIPTUM:
I want to thank Picnic King for giving me the idea to make this vehicle/guide. feel free to use it and modify it to your hearts content even if you aren't him

secondly I want to thank AFeckinEmu and his RavenField how to lean guide for motivating me whilst making this: https://steamhost.cn/steamcommunity_com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2232015832